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Monday, August 11, 2014

3 Bloody Degrees!

... these 3 degrees, this was the temperature in Braemar this morning!!

I checked out the weather radar, it didn't look good, it looked appalling!

We decided rather than sit in the van all day, we would carry on the trip heading north - what could go wrong? It's not like the narrowboat, at least we are nice and warm and dry in the van.

The fields next to the road were flooded, we had a massive amount of rain last night ...

A bit further along the river was looking very nasty ... .

We went along the road a bit further but were stopped by an estate worker who said the river had now burst its banks and that the road was impassable. He gave us a hand doing a twenty point turn in the road and we retreated.

We passed this spot a few minutes earlier, so the water was rising here as well ...

We had to head south passing over some very swollen fast flowing rivers ...

You can see by our track on autoroute where we backtracked down from Braemar then turned right, it doesn't look far but it took us one and a half hours to get were the little red arrow is on the map ...

The weather was still atrocious so we pulled into a Caravan Club site at Newtonmore. At least we could hook up to the 240 and have the heater running and have access to water etc.

It could be a lot worse, you could be camping! Elaine was speaking to the chap - this is their brand new tent, their old one was destroyed in the gales last night ...

It is a lovely site but very open so I can imagine what it must have been like last night ...

We took ourselves and the boys off for a walk this afternoon. The chap who runs the site has lived here for 59 years and he told us he has never seen it like this before. This is normally a trickle of water you step across, the main rail line is also blocked close by ...

Elaine said she would like to be walking along the prom in Spain instead ... I said I would make her a concrete sandwich so she could harden up!

We met one of the locals on our walk ...

She is a very butch girl indeed ...

It is now 19.24 and the temp is a balmy 6.5 degrees outside and a very comfortable 24 degrees in the van. I've just cracked a can of Boddies, life is good :-)

3 comments:

We toured Scotland last year, a week on a hire boat (Falkirk to Edinburgh & back), a week in the highlands based at Aviemore then a week up north and down the west coast. All just stunning. If you want to look ahead from where you are, you can view our blog from http://nbckoz.wordpress.com/2013/03/16/2013-cruise-plan/

Good luck with the narrow roads and blind bends in your current Manly Ferry, and good luck with the sensory overload!

About Us

Why is this blog called the 'Manly Ferry' you may ask! Well, we are two poms - previously living in Sydney, Australia - which is the home of the real 'Manly Ferry'!
In March 2012 we left Oz and travelled to the UK where we moved aboard our Narrowboat 'Caxton', which we fully planned to rename 'NB The Manly Ferry' but it was too pretty to change it! We also brought our animals with us from Oz ... Bombo, Sam (dogs), Geoffrey, William and Jaffa (cats).
In April 2014 we sold our beloved narrowboat and replaced her with a motorhome, in which we explored a fair bit of Europe and a bit more of Blighty!
In Oct 14 we travelled to Spain (Mojacar) in our Citroen C3, along with our dogs, Bombo and Sam*, where we stayed in an apartment until the end of November, when we headed back to the UK. We were going to head back to Oz but had a change of plans so in Feb 2015 we bought ourselves a new motorhome, also called the 'Manly Ferry'.
So, we are now embarking on some brand new adventures in the UK and Europe !
My gorgeous wife Elaine passed away on 18th August 2016 aged 54. Now there is just me and the two doggies Bombo and Sammie